Ian Cowie was named Consumer Affairs Journalist of the Year in the
London Press Club Awards 2012. He has been head of personal finance at
Telegraph Media Group since 2008, having been personal finance editor
since 1989. He joined the paper in 1986. He is @iancowie on Twitter.

Stock market predictions for 2013: will wealth and experience beat poverty and youth?

New analysis of New Year stock market predictions for 2013 contains bad news for pessimists and good news for people who might like to see the value of their savings and investments rise.

Perennial pessimism is an easy way to simulate wisdom about stock markets but it may tell us more about the people making those sage warnings of doom and gloom than it does about share prices in future.

More than 8,000 people were questioned by pollsters Populus before a clear trend emerged: the more pessimistic you are about how the FTSE 100 index will perform in 2013, the more likely you are to be poor, inexperienced and living in an economically depressed area. On a brighter note, you’re probably also female.

By contrast, richer, older, men living in the south east were far more likely to be optimistic about the outlook for share prices in 2013. Saga, the over-50s specialist which commissioned the survey, reports that men are much more positive about the future, with a net 22pc believing in a 2013 bullish stock mark, whereas women are the bears – with a net 2pc predicting a fall in the FTSE 100.

Pensioners, who have lived long enough to see a few economic cycles come and go, are more optimistic about share prices than younger respondents. People aged between 65 and 74 are twice as likely as those still at work to think the FTSE 100 will be trading higher in 12 months time. Those of all ages living in the South East were 15pc net positive or three times more optimistic than those in the North East, with Wales nearly as pessimistic at 6pc.

Differences are sharpest between socio-economic groups – with wealthier people in socio-economic groups A and B showing a net positive score of 18pc, while those in socio-economic groups D and E saying they believe the stock market will crash – with a net 6pc predicting share prices will fall next year. Could there be an element of wishful thinking here?

Of course, as the investment guru Warren Buffett has pointed out, there are only two types of expert when it comes to stock market predictions; those who don’t know and those who don’t know they don’t know. But, with American fiscal cliff worries making the economic outlook for 2013 more uncertain than ever, the Saga survey has a comforting message for savers and investors.

It also contains an implied rebuke for the cynics of cyberspace who, as the comments below will surely demonstrate, are relentlessly gloomy. Whisper it but behind the anonymous online tags, the sad truth seems to be that the more bearish someone is about the stock market, the less likely they are to have any skin in the game or to know what they are talking about. Happy New Year!